I can't preach nowhere cause I got a warrant on me, anyway, I said.
They say there ain't no God or law west of the Pecos.
We rode on like that, the wind plumb near blowing us out of the saddle. We stopped in a brush arbor, just like the one I got ordained in, and I put my slicker on Jennie and tied my hat down on my head with a scarf and built us a fire.
I bet there ain't no preacher like you on the Pecos, she said.
Just gunmen and drunkards, Jennie.
My mother says under the skin of every drunkard there's a good Baptist hiding somewhere.
Now, what do you answer to a statement like that?
Then she says, I bet the devil don't hate nothing worse than seeing his own money used against him.
I unrolled my blanket and covered our heads with it and put my arms inside her slicker, her face rubbing like a child's on my chest. I could feel her joined to me the way married folks is supposed to be and I knowed I didn't have to fight no more with all the voices and angry men that has lived inside me, and I saw the hailstones dancing in the fire and they was whiter than any snow, more pure than any words, and I heard the voice say Forgiven and I did not have to ask Who had spoken it.
The bailiff called from the courthouse. The jury was back in.
* * *
chapter thirty-four
It wasn't a dramatic moment. It was a Friday night and the jury had asked the judge they be allowed to deliberate that evening, which meant they had no plans to return Saturday or Monday morning. The courtroom was almost deserted, the shadows of the oscillating fans shifting back and forth across the empty seats, the sounds of the late spring filtering through the high windows, as though the theater in our lives had already moved on and made spectators of us again.
Except for Lucas when the jury foreman read the verdict of not guilty. He shook hands with the jurors, the judge, with me and Vernon and Temple,
with the bailiff, with the custodian mopping the hallway, with a soldier smoking a cigarette on the courthouse steps.
'That's it? There ain't no way it can be refiled, huh?' he said.
'That's it, bud,' I said.
His face was pink in the waving shadows of the trees. I could see words in his eyes, almost hear them in his throat. But Vernon stood next to him and whatever he wanted to say stayed caught in his face, like thoughts that wanted to eat their way out of his skin.
'Good night,' I said, and walked with Temple toward my car.
'Hold on. How much is the bill on all this?' Vernon said.
'There isn't one.'
'I ain't gonna take charity.'
'Well, I won't have you unhappy, Vernon. I'll send you the biggest bill I can.'
'Somebody's making obscene phone calls in the middle of the night. I think it's that little shit Darl Vanzandt.'
'Don't you or Lucas go near that kid.'
'What's Lucas supposed to do, live in a plastic bubble?… Hold on. I ain't finished. What you said when Lucas was on the stand, I mean, what you done to yourself to get him off, well… I guess it speaks for itself.'
His face looked flat, his hands awkward at his sides.
'Good night, Vernon.'
'Good night,' he said.
Pete came by early the next morning to go fishing in the tank. He was barefoot and wore a straw hat with a big St Louis Cardinals pin on it and a pair of faded jeans with dark blue iron-on patches on the knees.